Analysis of Grammatical Errors in Undergraduates’ Narrative Essays

Citation: Mohammed BELLO (2021). Analysis of Grammatical Errors in Undergraduates’ Narrative Essays. Yobe Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (YOJOLLAC), Vol. 9, Issue 1. Department of African Languages and Linguistics, Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria. ISSN 2449-0660

ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN UNDERGRADUATES’ NARRATIVE ESSAYS

By

Mohammed BELLO

Abstract

This article explores the grammatical errors committed by the undergraduate students’ in their narrative essays. This paper seeks to identify the kind of grammatical errors dominant in the students’ writings particularly narrative essays. The study is qualitative in nature. The samples used in this research consist of essays written by undergraduate students undergoing different courses at Modibbo Adama University, Yola a public University in Adamawa State, Nigeria. Based on a purposive sampling, the participants were fifteen in number comprises of males and females students between the age of sixteen and eighteen years old. They can read and write in English language and are all level one students. The findings revealed that knowledge of grammatical errors in English as a second language to Nigerian undergraduate students is paramount because it will help them to improve their academic writings in order for one to excel in an academic pursuit and for the purpose of employment. Also, the paper revealed three different themes through the participants’ samples essays such as deviation from the use of rules governing English subject-verb agreement, wrong spelling of English words and wrong use of English tenses. Finally, the paper recommends that the student-writers should make sure that their writings are always edited in order to avoid any form of grammatical errors. Similarly, future researchers should explore the grammatical errors in postgraduate students’ writings.

Keywords: Grammar, Errors, Undergraduate, Students, Narrative, Writings

1. Introduction

This article examines issues related to ‘grammatical errors’ in the content of narrative essays written by undergraduate students studying at Modibbo Adama University, Yola-Nigeria. The written essays were written in English as a language of instruction particularly in the Nigerian universities. Most English foreign language learners across the globe, who use English as a second language, commit errors in the course of using English language in either spoken or written form. Moreover, English is a second language and a medium of instruction in Nigeria schools at some level of the school since the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates in 1914 (Danladi, 2013). In this regard, both spoken and written English is taught in Nigeria schools and universities in order to meet the academic and other needs of the country. Similarly, the role of English in the Nigerian situation is equally the same with other sister countries across the globe (Crystal, 1992); as a unifying medium that serve a means of communication which cut across all the minor and major Nigerian ethnicities (Ezenwosu, 2011).

However, studies are limited when it comes to exploring grammatical errors in undergraduate students’ narrative writings with special reference to one of the Nigerian Universities. In this regard, there is no doubt that as a non-native speaker or writer of English language might commit a certain level of errors through his or her spoken or written English. In line with this assertion, this paper aims to analyze the level at which the participants commit grammatical errors, the dominant kinds of error featured in their respective narrative essays and the reasons the participants commit such errors.

2.0 Literature Review

This section of the article presents a review of related literature such as grammatical errors in students’ essays with reference to undergraduate students in Nigeria context and other parts of the world.

2.1Grammatical Errors: Writings in English

The studies of grammatical errors by second language learners of English across the globe and Nigeria in particular have captured the attention of notable researchers’ worldwide (James, 1988 and Crystal, 1999). James (2001) understood grammatical errors as the deviation from the uses of grammatical rules and conventions in both written and spoken language. Cem (2018) investigated how Greek and Turkish EFL learners commit errors in the process of using English language as a foreign and second language to them. The study employed the use of qualitative method in analyzing the data as collected and the data were extracted from the Cambridge learner corpus (CLC). The findings revealed that the most common agreement errors through the participants’ writings were verb agreement, noun agreement, anaphor agreement, determiner agreement, agreement error and quantifier agreement. Singh, Singh, Abdrazak & Ravinthar (2017) explored the grammatical errors made by tertiary students through the medium of writing as a language skill. The research is qualitative in nature and the one hundred and forty-four samples of the students written essays were analyzed based on content analysis approach. The participants were all diploma students. The result conveyed that the errors found in most of the students’ samples essays were subject-verb agreement, use of tenses and construction of complex sentences. Likewise, Mohammadi, Zainol Abidin, & Fong (2012) examined the effects of process writing practice on the writing qualities of form one students. The study employed qualitative method in collecting and analyzing the data for this particular research. Data were collected through the means of observations, interviews and the students’ written drafts. The findings revealed some effects on the writing pace and the writing quality itself and also the result demonstrates how students are able to attempt writing despite the difficulty of the writing task given to them.

 Similarly, Sarfraz (2011) examined how Pakistani undergraduate students commit errors in their English essay writings. The researcher employed qualitative method towards collecting and analyzing the samples of the students’ essays. Meanwhile, the participants were fifty in number including males and females. The study revealed that errors committed through inter-language are higher that the errors committed through mother tongue interference. In this regard, the study provides insights into language learning problems. Darus & Subramaniam (2009) explored the errors in written English essays of secondary school students in Malaysia. It is a qualitative research with seventy-two participants with thirty-seven males and thirty-five females. Similarly, they are all form four Malay students. The findings revealed that the most dominant errors committed by these set of participants were concord agreement, word choice and the appropriate use of tense in the course of their writings. In another hand, Nuruzzaman and Shuchi (2018) investigated how Saudi non-native students of English language commit errors in the course of their writings. The participants were ninety remedial students including males and females. Qualitative approach was used in collecting and analyzing the samples of the students’ essays as the data of the study. The study found out that the Saudi students commit errors in areas such as grammar, lexis, semantics and mechanics.

3. Methodology

This article employed a qualitative approach to analyze grammatical errors in undergraduate students’ narrative writings. The participants were fifteen students (male and female) of Modibbo Adama University; Yola a public University situated in Adamawa State, North-East Nigeria. Also, the participants were all level one students 2019/2020 academic session as at the time of conducting this research and were from School of Agriculture and Agricultural Technology (SAAT) and School of Environmental Studies (SES) respectively. All the participants can read and write in English language as a second language. The paper used pseudonyms to guide the participants’ confidentiality (Creswell, 2012; 2014).

3.1 Participants

 For the purpose of this study, the researcher used purposive sampling techniques (Creswell, 2014) to enable him select the respondents for this research through adherence to these protocols: (a) the participants can read and write in English language and (b) they are willing to participate in the research. In this study, the researcher selected both male and female students as participants because the university is a co-educational. Pseudonyms were employed to refer to the participants. The idea of employing pseudonyms was to make the participants to be assured of the confidentiality of their samples essays as the data for the study (Creswell, 2014; Gray, 2004). The students’ essays were all written in English language because the language of instruction is English. The participants were given the task as an assignment and topic for the essay writing was “Not all that glitters are gold” and the maximum word count for the essay was three hundred and fifty (350) words. Similarly, the assignment was given through the GST 102 Communication in English II which the participants registered as a compulsory course to all level one students of the university. The table 1 presents the participants’ profile in the study exercise:

Table: 1 Participants’ Profile

S/N.	Participants (Pseudonyms Name)	Degree Program	Level	Gender	Age
01.	W1	B. Tech Soil Science	Part One	Male	18
02.	W2	B. Tech Survey & Geo-informatics	Part One	Male	17
03.	W3	B. Tech Soil Science	Part One	Female	17
04.	W4	B. Tech Soil Science	Part one	Male	18
05.	W5	B. Tech Survey & Geo-informatics	Part One	Male	17
06.	W6	B. Tech Soil Science	Part One	Male	16
07.	W7	B. Tech Soil Science	Part one	Male	17
08.	W8	B. Tech Survey & Geo-informatics	Part one	Male	18
09.	W9	B. Tech Soil Science	Part One	Male	18
10.	W10	B. Tech Soil Science	Part One	Male	17
11.	W11	B. Tech Soil Science	Part One	Male	17
12.	W12	B. Tech Survey & Geo-informatics	Part One	Male	16
13.	W13	B. Tech Soil Science	Part One	Female	17
14.	W14	B. Tech Soil Science	Part One	Female	18
15.	W15	B. Tech Survey & Geo-informatics	Part One	Female	16

Source: Department of English GST 102 Communication in English II registration record files for 2019/2020 academic session

3.2 Data Collection

The data for this research were collected through the means of administering written assignment to the participants. The time frame for the written assignment was one week. The samples of the participants written essays were to assist the research to understand the level in which the students commit errors particularly grammatical errors through their written narrative essays as the samples data for this study.

3.3 Data Analysis

In analyzing the samples of the participants’ essays as the primary data for this particular study; the researcher categorized the samples essays as the data for this study into these themes: (a) Deviation from the use of rules of English subject-verb agreement (b) Wrong spelling of English words and (c) Wrong use of English tenses.

4.1 Findings

This section of this particular paper presents the results from the samples of the participants’ written essays. The results revealed three different themes from the samples essays. The themes are: deviation from the use of rules governing English subject-verb agreement, wrong spelling of English words and wrong use of English tenses. The researcher presents the emerging themes in (Table 2):

Table: 2 Themes of grammatical errors in undergraduate students’ narrative writings

 

S/N	Title of the Themes
01.	Deviation from the use of rules governing English subject-verb agreement
O2.	Wrong spelling of English words
03.	Wrong use of English tenses

Theme 1: Deviation from the use of rules governing English subject-verb agreement

Most of the samples of the participants written essays revealed that the participants of this study deviate from the rules governing subject-verb agreement specifically through their writing tasks particularly narrative essay. The following excerpts demonstrated how the participants commit errors specifically deviation from the compliance to the rules governing subject-verb agreement in English writings:

 …she have a huge hair… (W2)

 …the students has a round faces… (W4)

 …the woman pretend as innocent… (W6)

 …Her husband look handsome… (W8)

 …she present herself as married woman… (W10)

 …he speak fluently… (W12)

Note: W= refers to writer (participants)

The words (in bold) from the sentences presented above showed how the writers deviated from the use of rules governing subject-verb agreement particularly through the medium of written communication. The first sentence above demonstrates how W2 abused the use of rules of subject-verb agreement in writing because the correct form of the verb to be use in place of ‘have’ is’ has’ in order to agree with the subject of the sentence ‘she’. Similarly, the excerpts presented above from these writers (W4, 6,8,10 and 12) respectively commit errors in the use of appropriate verbs that were presented (in bold), the correct forms of the verbs are: have, pretends, looks, presents and speaks respectively. In this regards, these findings revealed how the participants’ demonstrated their knowledge of English language grammar particularly in written communication.

Theme 2: Wrong spelling of English words

 The study found that wrong spelling of English words is another dominant theme in most of the participants’ essay writings which is a grammatical error from the part of the participants-writer who is also a non-native speaker or writer of English language. The following excerpts from the participants written essays as samples data displayed some of the words that the writers spelled them wrongly:

 …he always displayed good caracter… (W 13)

 …certaintly, the staff exhibins high sence of professinalism… (W15)

 …the manager gives him all trust becouse of his intergrity… (W7)

 …she abused the privilage that her husband given to her… (W1)

 …I am disapointed with the manner in which my husband and father of my children betrayyed me… (W3)

The words (in bold) in each of the above presented excerpts demonstrate how some of the participants have difficulties in spelling some English words through the medium of essay writings. For instance, one can understand that words such: character, certainly, exhibits, sense, professionalism, because, integrity, privilege, disappointed, and betrayed were all wrongly spelled by these participants (W13, 15, 7, 1, and 3) respectively as shown from the above excerpts.

Theme 3: Wrong use of English tenses

The samples of the participants’ essays demonstrate how most the writers wrongly used tenses in the course of their writings particularly narrative essay. The following excerpts revealed the evidences of the wrong use of English tenses as one of the emerging themes from the sampled essays: 

 …the bride is hug by him… (W1)

 …He participates fully during the last year’s festival… (W3)

 …the bride had a long hair… (W15)

 …if you are nominated, you will find it easy to participates in the party primaries… (W12)

It is evident that the participants committed several errors in respect of wrong use of English tenses through their written communication particularly narrative essays as in the sampled data for this specific study. A few of such excerpts from the samples essays were presented above as illustrations in order to justify the theme titled “wrong use of English tenses”. All the words (in bold) such as: is hug, participates, had, and will from the above excerpts showed how the writers deviated from the appropriate use of English tenses in the course of their written communication which contributes towards distorting the meaning of the written texts.

5.1 Discussion

This research revealed three themes from the results obtained from the data analysis. In this regards, the themes are: deviation from the use of rules governing English subject-verb agreement, wrong spelling of English words and wrong use of English tenses.

The first theme “Deviation from the use of rules governing English subject-verb agreement” showed how some of the participants deviated from complying with the use of appropriate rules governing English subject-verb agreement. Similarly, from the findings it revealed that most of the writers cannot differentiates between singular subject, plural subject, singular verb and plural verb particularly in a written grammatical structure which leads to deviation from the appropriate use rules governing subject-verb agreement. In line with the aim of this study, the research found that the participants’ revealed errors in the area of subject-verb agreement specifically in writings in the academic environment. The findings of this study concur with the findings of several scholars on how grammatical errors are committed by student-writers from various levels of education across the globe (Darus & Subramaniam, 2009; Sarfraz, 2011; Nuruzzaman & Shuchi, 2018; Cem, 2018). Similarly, the study revealed that issues related to grammatical errors in no small measure in the area of ESL written texts because they form part of the context of academic discourse. In fact, this agrees with the position of Mohammadi, Zainol Abidin, & Fong (2012) which reveals that writers in academic discourse demonstrate their deficiencies in the knowledge of subject-verb agreement in both written and verbal communication for the purpose of examination to enable the students’ succeed in their academic pursue.

The second theme “Wrong spelling of English words” the paper revealed how some of the participants commit grammatical errors more especially in the area of wrong spelling of some English words in the course of their essay writings. This result is in congruence with Sarfraz (2011) and Cem (2018) positions.

The third theme “Wrong use of English tenses” the analysis of the sample essays as unit of analysis revealed how most of the participants’ commit errors in terms of wrong use of English tenses through their medium of written communication. For instance, the errors can be seen vividly mostly in how in the course of reporting a past event a writer reports it as in present form or the other way round which the readers cannot comprehend the written text easily because of the abuse in the use of appropriate English tenses.

6. Conclusion

The paper has explored how English as a second language learners in Nigeria, specifically undergraduate students, commit grammatical errors through their English language writing particularly narrative essay. The samples of narrative essays written by the undergraduate students demonstrate their deficiencies in the use of English language as a second language through writings. In this regards, the study revealed three dominant grammatical errors committed through the samples essays. Similarly, the result of this research showed three themes such as: deviation from the use of rules governing English subject-verb agreement, wrong spelling of English words and wrong use of English tenses.

Also, the study contributes in analyzing some of the second language learners’ poor proficiency in academic writing. Specifically, the grammatical errors as displayed in their written communication. In a nutshell, the study suggests; that more attention should be given to the ways of improving the teaching and writing essays specifically writing narrative text and related issues among ESL learners in Nigeria by all relevant stakeholders such as the English teachers, Post primary school management boards and members of the National Institute for Nigerian Languages in organizing capacity building workshops on how to improve and enhance the teachers skills in teaching English as a second language in Nigeria. Also, the international and national bodies that are recognized by law should provide needed training and retraining of English teachers in order to improve their teaching writing in English to the ESL students specifically at university level of education in Nigeria. Finally, the article recommends that further research be explored on grammatical errors on postgraduates’ writings particularly in the other genres of writings such as thesis and article writing.

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